About Me

After college and the army, I studied acting and theater; I have an MFA in Acting and uncompleted Ph.D. in Performance Studies (ABD). I have worked as an actor, director, dramaturg/literary advisor, critic/reviewer, essayist, editor, and teacher of theater and acting (studio/conservatory, college, high school, and middle school). Several years ago, some theater friends who don't live in New York anymore asked me to keep them informed about what I see and I began sending them detailed, opinionated e-mails.

13 May 2015

Philip Pullman’s 'His Dark Materials'

by Kirk Woodward

[Frequent
ROT contributor
Kirk Woodward returns now with a slightly different piece of writing. In “Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials,” he gives us a
critical analysis of the fantasy series of his title, comparing it for
illustrative purposes with J. K. Rowling’s Harry Potter books, with which His
Dark Materials shares some aspects.
Kirk’s not only a writer himself, but he was an English major in college
and reads across the spectrum extensively, so he has a well-formed basis to
make observations. He’s also what he
calls a “committed Christian,” so Pullman’s well-known opposition to organized
religion and distrust of the Church—the writer’ssaid
in an interview that he was raised in the Anglican Church and is as Christian
as they come . . . except that he
doesn’t believe in God—would be a natural subject for Kirk to examine. I can assure ROTters that “Philip Pullman” will be worth the
read and may well spark a few discussions.
(Don’t hesitate to comment, Readers.
Both Kirk and I will be interested to hear what you all find to say in
response.)]

J.
K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter books, is the Beatles of literature, and
Philip Pullman, author of the fantasy series
His Dark Materials, is her
Rolling Stones. The comparison is apt in many ways. Rowling’s sales far exceed
Pullman’s, and everyone else’s, but he has strong popularity. His work, like that of the Stones, is on
the darker side. Supporters of each use the strengths of their champions to bash the other. And both Rowling and
Pullman maintain good relations with each other, as did the Beatles and the
Stones. Rowling has spoken with enthusiasm
about Pullman’s work. Pullman is more reserved about Rowling – he says he’s
only read the second (and weakest) Harry Potter book (Harry Potter and the
Chamber of Secrets; Arthur A.
Levine/Scholastic, 1998 – U.K./1999 – U.S.), and that only because he
had to, as a judge for an annual book contest, but he has also spoken positively
of Rowling.

His
Dark Materials (Northern Lights, published in the U.S. as The Golden
Compass, Scholastic,1995; The Subtle Knife,1997;
and The Amber Spyglass,2000)is the kind of fantasy a
former schoolteacher like Pullman might be expected
to write. It’s not only a work in three volumes, but it contains a number of “books”
within those volumes. There’s a “book” on ecology and the environment, terribly
appropriate for these times, involving the changes in
climate and their effect on animals (the polar
bears). There’s a “book” on scientific procedures,
centering on Dr. Mary Malone,
formerly a nun, now a physicist; this is the least exciting material in the
series, but it is full of respect
for the patient work that
researchers do. There’s a “book” on the nature of animals that has value for
anyone who thinks about the subject, because Pullman makes it clear that
animals have their own ways of being conscious. There’s a “book” on string
theory. And so on.

There’s
also a book on religion. Obviously this is the most controversial part of the series, since Pullman has stated a number
of times that he is an atheist, and his dislike of organized religion is both
well known and evident. I have a problem with Pullman on this aspect of his series, but not because of his attack on
religion. I don’t think that it goes
remotely far enough. A writer in the New York Times Book Review called
his position “closely reasoned.” The
reader may judge from the following:

All the history of human life has been a
struggle between wisdom and stupidity.
The rebel angels, the followers of wisdom, have always tried to open minds; the Authority and his churches have
always tried to keep them closed.

I
used to be a nun you see. I thought physics
could be done to the glory of God, till I saw there wasn't any God at all and
that physics was more interesting
anyway. The Christian religion is a very powerful
and convincing mistake, that's all.

These
passages do not strike me as “closely reasoned.” They are essentially insults,
although I suspect that many “religious” people
would without hesitation agree that organized religion has been responsible for much slaughter, torturing, and mental
dictatorship. Institutions have a
way of defending themselves, and religion is no exception.
The Church has often behaved the way Pullman says it does, perhaps
without so much melodramatic twirling of moustaches, but nevertheless
indefensibly.

And
a “religious” person would not necessarily object to Pullman’s presentation of the Authority (the name in the books
for the Church, or possibly for the Roman Catholic Church); as someone said to
me, “It’s nothing like the God I believe in.” I suspect
this may be why the former Archbishop
of Canterbury recommended the books, suggesting that they might be useful in
religious education classes. Undoubtedly the Archbishop
has firsthand knowledge of the weaknesses of organized religion, especially the fanatical kind. (Pullman’s denunciation
of religion appears
to deal specifically with
Christians; one wonders whether he would include the Jews, the Buddhists, and
the Muslims in his indictment.)

But
if religion is so bad, what’s the alternative? I’m afraid that the only
principle I can find in the books, besides the idea that the church is bad, is
that very young teens should be allowed to have unprotected
sex with each other. I can imagine screams from Pullman’s defenders objecting
that he never says that his young characters Lyra Belacqua, a twelve-year-old
girl fated to bring about a massive correction to the world she lives in, and
Will Parry, whom Lyra encounters along the course of her adventures, have sex,
and Pullman has said the same thing. Literally he is correct: he doesn’t explicitly say the two characters have been sexually
active. But I doubt that few readers would take these passages
any other way:

I
heard, . . . I was awake and I wanted to tell you the same and now I know what
I must have felt all the time: I love you, Will, I love you –

The word love set his nerves ablaze.
All his body thrilled with it, and he answered her in the same words, kissing
her hot face over and over again, drinking in with adoration the scent of her
body and her warm, honey-fragrant hair and her sweet, moist mouth that tasted
of the little red fruit.

Around them there was nothing but silence, as
if all the world were holding its breath.

. . . .

They looked dazed, as if some happy
accident had robbed them of their wits; they moved slowly; their eyes were not
focused on what they looked at.

They spent
all day on the wide hills, and in the heat of the afternoon, they visited their
gold-and-silver grove. They talked, they bathed, they ate, they kissed, they
lay in a trance of happiness murmuring words whose sound was as confused
as their sense, and they felt they were melting with love.

. . . .

He felt her tremble, and then under his hands
the delicate bones of her back began to rise and fall, and he heard her sob
quietly. He stroked her warm hair, her tender shoulders, and then he kissed her
face again and again, and presently
she gave a deep, shuddering sigh and
fell still.

Now
calm down, everyone. . . . This is the language of the bodice-rippers. At a
minimum, Pullman has given himself “plausible
deniability.” If he is merely suggesting that teenagers should be free to hug
and kiss, well, the church has never had much luck preventing
that. And the encounter of the two tweens is presented
in the books as a world-transforming event, one toward which all history has
been moving. It’s hard to imagine that a night of mere snuggling could accomplish so great a goal, or that the church would seriously
bother to oppose
it.

The
truth is that as a writer Pullman tends to pull
his punches. He wants to have things both ways; for
example, he doesn’t want to say that the kids in his story make love, but he
certainly wants us to feel not only that they do, but that they ought to, as a
liberated and liberating activity. Even
in his presentation of death, he is
able to give those who would like to believe in immortality the feeling that in
some sense such a thing just might exist. To quote:

I’ll be looking for you, Will, every moment,
every single moment. And when we do find each other again, we’ll cling together
so tight that nothing and no one’ll ever tear us apart.
Every atom of me and every atom of you. . . . We’ll live in birds and flowers
and dragonflies and pine trees and
in clouds and in those little specks
of light you see floating in sunbeams. . . . And when they use our atoms to
make new lives, they won’t just be able to take one, they’ll have to take two,
one of you and one of me, we’ll be joined so tight. . . .

At
one level Pullman in his writing will compromise
to keep his readers happy. What
he really feels in private, of
course, is unknowable.

Frequently
fantasy (as opposed to imagination) visualizes a world without God, a fact that
in my opinion – my own biases show here – can explain why fantasy books such as
Pullman’s, and other creations such as electronic fantasy games, tend to be so
consistently gloomy. Pullman’s materials are indeed dark. Why not? One would
think that if we could invent a world without that repressive old God telling
us what to do, we’d be a great deal happier. The reverse appears to me to be
true: without a God to provide lasting consequences for behavior, there are no
consequences, so anything goes (cf. Game of Thrones/A Song of Ice and Fire). Much
fantasy conceives of the “natural” world as a world of deterministic forces, in
which nothing lasts. As a result, it seems to me, contemporary fantasy is
frequently morose and full of foreboding. (This is not the case with the Potter
books, which clearly point to the survival in another world of those who have
died, for example, Harry’s parents. Similarly, the fantasies of the Star
Wars films offer The Force, another indicator of a reality greater
than the everyday.)

We
may now ask whether Pullman’s or J. K. Rowling’s books are “better.” This is clearly
an apples-and-oranges
question. However, some things can be said. Open a book by Pullman and one by
Rowling at random, and the differences immediately become clear. The two are working
two different sides of the street. Rowling is by far the more contemporary and “realistic” writer, and her specialty is dialogue, which is consistent with and
characteristic of the characters it reveals. Her school kids sound like real
school kids talking.

Pullman’s
specialty is epic
and the well-turned narrative phrase.
His dialogue slips in and out of
credibility along with his characterizations – his heroine, Lyra, in particular is often simply
unbelievable for her age. But as a prose
stylist he is magnificent, and his Homeric similes are particularly
impressive. The kind of writing
Pullman does is the kind more likely to win critical praise
and prizes, since anyone can see that
it’s Literature, but that is not the last word in a value judgment.

In
the matter of plotting, it seems to
me that Rowling is simply superior to Pullman. He invents and piles on incidents with determination, throwing in
everything he can think of, but an accumulation of detail is no cure for a
story that is not particularly
dynamic. The plot of His Dark Materials
tends to rely on the search for certain objects, thrust into the story at
arbitrary times. The Potter books, interestingly, also involve the search for
objects, but those searches are required by the overall narrative, while other
objects could be substituted for the Golden Compass
or the Subtle Knife, both of which exist to make the plot
possible, not to embody it.

One
may compare Pullman’s plotting to the forward thrust of the Harry Potter
stories on all levels, from subplot
to book to series. The enthusiasm to see what happens in the next Potter book comes from the fact
that there is a “next” that is required by the story, and not simply more incidents to come. The war against heaven
and Lyra’s coming of age are not sufficiently differentiated from other events
to be more than hooks to hang a story on. The result is that the reader can simply be worn out by the accumulation of incident from
time to time – at least this reader was.

Similarly,
there is no question in what way Lord Voldemort, in the Potter books, is evil.
Pullman doesn’t make much of an effort to distinguish between the forces of the
Church and the forces of (in Pullman’s terms) good, except
to tell us that the Church and its minions are
evil and repressive and the people
fighting it are on the side of the good. Where this distinction of good and
evil comes from, if there is no God, is hard for me to see, but are there no
other differences between the Church and its opponents, besides the banner each is fighting under? The
differences between the sides are largely matters of weaponry
– Zeppelins,
gyrocopters, so what? Lord Asriel, the leader of the rebellion against
the Church, is as unattractive a figure as Metatron, the archangel fighting to
maintain the Church’s supremacy –
both are remote and ruthless. Is there really a reason to pick sides?

We
often talk about “good writing” as though it were one kind of thing that can be
identified in anyone’s work. Clearly this is not the case. We need to ask what the
writer is trying to achieve, and whether or not the writer achieves it.
Accurate answers to these questions will bring us closer to a fair evaluation
of the author’s work. In his recent book, The Good Man Jesus and the
Scoundrel Christ (Canongate Books, 2012), having engaged in a great
deal of public dispute on matters of religion, Pullman may present his case more clearly. It seems to me, in
the cases discussed here, however, that Rowling is able to achieve her
objectives, and Pullman is not. If His Dark
Materials really is a stick to beat religion with, one wishes it
were a better stick.